SCAM Agencement: cooperation and quality serving bespoke interiors
- Furniture Technologies
In Lisieux, in the heart of Normandy, wood takes shape through outstanding design and manufacturing standards. This is where SCAM Agencement produces bespoke retail interiors made exclusively from timber sourced from sustainably managed French forests.
Teamwork lies at the core of every successful company. Yet there are manufacturing businesses where this value can truly be felt every single day — not only in daily operations, but also in the strategic decisions that drive the company’s growth.
This is the case of SCAM Agencement, a cooperative company founded in 1977, now bringing together around thirty partners and generating annual revenues of nearly €12 million. The company operates as a SCOP (Société Coopérative et Participative), a model that directly involves employees in strategic decision-making, making them “the primary guarantors of the company’s growth and stability” as explained by Thomas Pineira, Sales Manager of SCAM.
Customers themselves experience this shared commitment throughout every stage of a project, from the technical design phase through to final installation. “Our teams work continuously together to ensure a high-level service, from the very first sketch to final delivery” Pineira points out.
Excellence in bespoke manufacturing
SCAM Agencement’s core business focuses on custom interior fit-outs for stores belonging to major brands and franchise networks. At the same time, the company also develops projects for private clients, including walk-in wardrobes, offices and small retail spaces.
Production mainly revolves around particleboard, melamine-faced panels, MDF and solid wood processing. Regardless of the material involved, however, the cooperative’s vision is built around three key pillars: high construction quality, responsiveness in handling urgent projects, and constant attention to installation, regarded as an integral part of the final value delivered to the customer.
As Thomas Pineira explains, the adoption of advanced machinery has become increasingly crucial over the years.
“Our joinery workshop is equipped with a modern and comprehensive machinery fleet operated by a highly versatile team. This approach guarantees full control over production, lead times and final quality.”
Thanks to this organisation, the company is able to handle both prototypes and one-off pieces as well as batch production, while consistently delivering premium-quality products.
Higher productivity with SCM
From both an organisational and production standpoint, the company places great importance on automated technologies supporting human work. These solutions are selected not only to improve efficiency, but above all to enhance employee wellbeing by reducing the most demanding, repetitive and low value-added tasks.
It is within this innovation journey that SCM solutions have become the core of SCAM Agencement’s production department.
Until a few years ago, the sizing process relied on two manually fed beam saws — an angular panel saw dedicated to large production batches and a single-blade machine reserved for special operations and more delicate materials. Today, the company operates a fully integrated cutting cell with automatic loading and unloading systems, where two SCM beam saws are automatically fed by a single three-axis
“flexstore elr” automatic storage system.
This investment has enabled the company to increase productivity up to 1,600 pieces per shift, improve operator ergonomics and safety, and optimise factory space through a single integrated solution.
The automatic storage system efficiently manages both homogeneous stacks and mixed stacks consisting of panels with different sizes and finishes.
The “gabbiani a2” angular beam saw ensures high cutting quality and outstanding processing flexibility. Under normal operating conditions, both loading and unloading are fully automated. However, SCM designed the cell to also allow manual loading and unloading for smaller batches whenever required.
At the end of the cell, a multi-station “mahros stacker” guarantees maximum flexibility in handling both mixed stacks and panels destined for batch production. The system also includes a lifting table for oversized formats.
The entire cell is managed through the Maestro watch line supervisor software integrated with the company’s ERP system, enabling production process control while ensuring bidirectional interconnection with factory IT systems.
Once cut, the panels move to a “stefani rocket O” squaring edge banding cell. This automatic system has been designed to process both batch-one production and medium-to-large batches exceeding 100 panels. One of its major advantages is the significant productivity increase even in batch-one manufacturing, reaching up to 2,000 pieces per shift.
Managed by a second Maestro watch line supervisor, the cell features motorised infeed rollers and two parallel “stefani one” edgebanders connected through a transfer roller conveyor and equipped with automatic panel return and handling systems.
The cell has been specifically designed to maximise flexibility: depending on actual production requirements and batch size, panels can be processed on two or all four sides and unloaded either automatically or manually.
In addition to these integrated cells, the company also relies on several other SCM machines supporting complementary production phases: a 5-axis “morbidelli m600” CNC machining centre for drilling and routing operations; a “morbidelli ux200” drilling solution combining the efficiency of a drilling line with the flexibility of a CNC machining centre; and a highly versatile
“dmc sd 60” sanding machine capable of processing MDF, particleboard and melamine-faced panels, alongside other woodworking machines dedicated to solid wood processing.
“The introduction of these technologies has enabled us to increase productivity, improve working conditions for our employees and expand our business opportunities, making it possible to take on a greater number of subcontracting projects,” concludes Thomas Pineira. “Moreover, through SCM’s IoT solutions and digital services, we can remotely monitor machines and production in real time, ensuring constant and precise control over our manufacturing processes.”
Backed by a strong cooperative model, specialised in-house expertise and an increasingly connected and automated production system, SCAM Agencement looks to the future with a clear vision: continuing to grow by enhancing bespoke manufacturing without compromising efficiency, sustainability or quality of work.
